Bollywood bitten by

Love Story 2050 is India’s pioneer big budget science fiction movie. The film makes extensive use of technology and special effects in creating a time machine which transports the characters to the year 2050 with flying cars, 200 storied buildings, robots and sky rails.

Producer-director Harry Baweja transforms Mumbai into a futuristic metropolis and features robot, teddy bears and an energy-blasting fight. Baweja said: “It’s the first time that the Oscar winning special effects director John Cox is working for a Hindi film to create a futuristic Mumbai of 2050.”

This Bollywood romance crosses time and space, switching between present-day Adelaide and futuristic Mumbai. It is the debut vehicle of Harman Baweja and also stars former Miss World, Priyanka Chopra.

According to Merzin Tavaria, creative director VFX/animation of Prime Focus Ltd, Love Story 2050 is by far the most ambitious VFX film out of India to date. The DI for the film was completed by Prime Focus on Autodesk Lustre while scanning was done on Spirit 2K. The film features more than 1200 VFX shots of a level that audiences have never seen in an Indian film.

“Pre-production started about two years ago. Given the scale of the project, the pre-time was not enough and the concept and pre-production carried on much into the production itself. The post on 2050 lasted for more than 18 months. Given the movie’s track record and scale of operations, Prime Focus was the obvious choice to be the lead VFX facility,” said Tavaria.

Frantic Films (Canada) now a part of the Prime Focus group was called upon to collaborate on one key sequence. Due to time constraints, two other sequences were farmed out to Rising Sun Pictures in Australia as well.

The film was shot on super 35 and was blown up to anamorphic at the DI stage. Autodesk Lustre played an important part in the whole digital loop. Since large parts of the VFX were 100 per cent generated, it was very important to make it blend with the live action and give it a very film like look. To achieve this and to make sure of the final result, frames from each shot were rendered and first checked on Lustre before hitting render for the entire shot.

“This saved a lot of time and effort. We could apply our own look up table (LUT) and make sure of what we were getting as our final look. We also used Lustre at the VFX stage to check the range that would be available for us to tweak at the DI stage,” said Tavaria.

“This gave the colorists immense flexibility to give the VFX and the rest of the live footage a seamless look. Luckily for us, we had a Lustre dedicated for the VFX. The conform of the VFX as well as DI was done on Autodesk Smoke, as it is our most trusted toolset till date.”

“3D platform was Maya throughout, except in the case of Frantic Films, where we used 3ds Max. The composting platform of choice was Fusion as that has been very tightly integrated into our pipeline,” he added.

As the Indian VFX industry is not more than three years old, the availability of artists is very low. Being one of the first films of this level meant that artists would be doing this kind of work for the first time.

Delivering a project of this level with the experience available in India was a true challenge. However, Prime Focus utilized its global reach to bring in a few key artists to train and guide the team, to overlook challenging tasks and to meet deadlines.

VFX used in the film covered everything in a VFX portfolio including basic TV screen composites, motion graphics that go into TV screens, holograms, animatronic robots to high end photorealistic computer graphics like 2050 Mumbai cityscape, flying cars, virtual games, flying bike chase through high-rise buildings, a complete virtual 3D cityscape for a climax fight sequence between the protagonist and the villain on the 200th floor terrace of a building.

“We knew at the start of the project this would be a test of patience, skill and perseverance. The team displayed all of the above and came out with shining colours. I am proud to say that an Indian team has been able to deliver this quality and quantity with the given experience and budgets,” said Tavaria.

“Hopefully, it will be a benchmark and would serve as a good example for the industry to see and it will show how VFX can be used and what can be expected. I can safely say, India has arrived in the VFX space.”

Adelaide to Mumbai with love South Australia’s Premier Mike Rann, who had a cameo role in the movie, says the filming of “Love Story 2050” on his home turf was a dream come true. “We think it is good for the film industry. It’s great to have people spending money here for 55 days, using South Australia as a location, but it is also giving us worldwide publicity that money can’t buy”, Premier Rann said. Indian films shot in Australia have had spin offs in other industries like tourism, education and the local economy and employment. For the year ending June 2007, South Australia attracted 3,300 Indian visitors and India is the state’s second-highest source of overseas students with 2,692 students enrolled across all levels from primary to university. Producer-director Harry Baweja, who chose Adelaide over other locations in Italy and Scotland, said South Australia proved to be the “perfect choice”. The stars and crew spent five weeks shooting scenes across the state. Besides the state capital Adelaide, the film showcases some of Australia’s most famous tourist destinations and diverse landscapes - the Kangaroo Island, the Flinders Ranges and Lake Eyre and the technological expertise and facilities available in South Australia. “This production is just the latest in a series of mutually beneficial marketing tie ups we have been able to structure between Bollywood and the Australian State Governments. Other successes include ‘Heyy Babyy’ and more recently, the cricketing film starring Brett Lee, ‘Victory’,” said Anupam Sharma managing director of Sydney-based Films and Casting TEMPLE. Sharma was the Australian line producer for “Love Story 2050”.